Many computer networks employ Multi-Protocol Label Switching Traffic Engineering (MPLS-TE) for its strengths, such as fast-reroute, bandwidth guarantees, etc. Often, MPLS-TE establishes tunnels (TE Label Switched Paths, or “TE-LSPs”) between nodes (Label Switched Routers, “LSRs”) for use with forwarding traffic. When traffic is received at a head-end node (LSR) of a tunnel, that head-end node may encapsulate the traffic within the tunnel to reach a tunnel tail-end node. The tail-end node, if not the destination of the traffic, may decapsulate the traffic, and may forward the traffic on either another tunnel, or through conventional (e.g., Internet Protocol, “IP”) routing techniques.
As part of MPLS-TE, an “autoroute” operation may be used by a head-end node in order to route all network traffic down its tunnels. The autoroute operation determines which tunnel could be used for the traffic, and sets up the head-end node's routing tables to route the traffic down the appropriate tunnel. One problem associated with autoroute, however, is that it is not always desirable to send all traffic (at or beyond the tail-end node of a tunnel) onto the tunnels, and conventional autoroute operations offer an “all-or-nothing” approach to forwarding traffic onto tunnels.